HIST 7104 - DispossessingTheWildernessReview-AWhittenberg

8/7/2019 HIST 7104 - DispossessingTheWildernessReview-AWhittenberg

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/hist-7104-dispossessingthewildernessreview-awhittenberg 1/3

Whittenberg 1

Mark David Spence. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and Making of the National Parks . (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as “an area where the earth andcommunity of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not

remain.”1

In his book Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and Making of the National Parks , Mark David Spence questions this notion since American Indians haveinhabited almost the entirety of the land of the United States for thousands of years.Contract historian for the National Park Service and adjunct professor of history for theUniversity of Oregon, Spence‟s first book dispels the old myth of park officials and far toomany scholars that “native peoples avoided national park areas because their places were notconducive to use or occupation.” 2 Perhaps reviewer for Environmental History , Dan Flores

put it best that “ Mark Spence has now done in Dispossessing the Wilderness is to show-in areadable, careful, superbly-documented series of case studies involving three of America'smost famous national parks-that converting Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier intoEuroamericans' fantasy wildernesses actually meant kicking several Indian groups out of

their homes.” 3

Dispossessing the Wilderness is a quick read of 139 pages and is broken into tenshort chapters. Spence focuses on three national parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacieras mentioned before) for the following reasons:

First, each supported a native population at the time of its establishment;second, the removal of Indians from these parks became precedents for theexclusion of native peoples from other holdings within the national park system; and third, as the grand symbols of American wilderness, theuninhabited landscapes preserved in these parks have served as models forpreservationist efforts, and native dispossession, the world over. 4

Along with this, Spence also argues that the idea of a “wilderness” is a fairly recent idea andincludes the strange opinion that Indians were merely the “first visitors” to these parks notunlike the countless tourists of today. 5 Written just before Shepard K rech‟s The Ecological

Indian or Andrew Isenberg‟s The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History,1750-1920 , Spence seems to agree with his fellow authors in at least the fact that the NorthAmerican continent was not some untouched wilderness but altered and modified by thenative people living there before and after the Europeans arrived. The American idea of these three parks as a “scenic playground, national symbol and sacred remnant of God‟soriginal handiwork” flies in the face of hard evidence and research that Indians lived, huntedand sometimes fought and died on this land. Spence is also not afraid to use the quotes of famous environmentalists like Thoreau, Muir or Grinnell to show how their ideas of wilderness also did not include American Indians. For example, George Bird Grinnell is

1 Wilderness Society’s Website: http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=legisAct&error=404(Accessed March 10, 2010).2 Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5.3 Dan Flores, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,”Environmental History 5 (April 2000): 273.4 Spence, 5.5 Ibid.



Whittenberg 2

well known for helping to establish Glacier National Park due to his visits to the mountainswithin the Blackfeet reservation. Using native guides, Grinnell wrote of areas just off Indiantrails as being “absolutely virgin ground with no sign of previous passage.” 6 Apparently, theidea of wilderness never being touched by mankind does not include Blackfeet as reallyhuman by Grinnell‟s definition.

The three case studies show an inconsistent message and policies by the park service.At Yellowstone, the Indians residing in the area were considered dangerous and a problemfor tourism. Removal had to take place immediately. At the other two parks, Indians wereviewed as part of the parks‟ promotional campaigns. Probably one of the saddest pictures isfound on page 85 of the book where a young Blackfeet boy is in full native garb serving as acaddy for a visiting golfer. This promoted the idea that Indians wanted tourists to come andtheir main goal was to entertain and serve. Eventually all would be removed from the threepark areas and this does not just reflect a short period of time or a particular administration.The Crow, Bannock and Shoshone were removed in the 1870s from Yellowstone. TheBlackfeet left Glacier in the early 1900s while the last Yosemite family left in 1969. Allhave tried in vain to again gain some access to resources of the parks, and Spence covers a

number of these court cases such as 1896‟s Ward v. Race Horse (concerning Bannock hunting rights at Yellowstone). The final chapter details the past twenty or more years andhow these mindsets have finally started to change.

What do other historians think of Spence‟s work? Perhaps the highest praise comesfrom Kurk Dorsey of the University of New Hampshire. In his review for the American

Historical Review , he writes “this is a rare example of a book that is too short” with someideas left to footnotes that “cry out for elaboration.” 7 Andrew Gulliford, formerly of MiddleTennessee State University, calls Spence‟s work “ a benchmark book ” that “neatly i ntersectsIndian, environmental, Western, and public history disciplines in a clear condemnation of park service policies .”8 Another reviewer, Robert H. Keller of Western WashingtonUniversity, writes

Dispossessing the Wildernesshas many virtues. Accurate, detailed accountsof the creation of Yellowstone and Glacier national parks rest on solid

research, as does the story at Yosemite. Ethnography of pre-park aboriginaluse is excellent. So is the selection of photographs. Clear boundary maps arehelpful even to those familiar with the three parks. 9

Mark Harvey of North Dakota State University also compares Dispossessing the Wildernessto other recent works that cover the relationships between American Indians and the park system such as Louis Warren's The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists inTwentieth Century America (1997) and Theodore Catton's Inhabited Wilderness: Indians,

Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska (1997). 10 Several reviewers applauded the amount

6 Spence, 78.7 Kurk Dorsey, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,” The American Historical Review 105 (June 2000): 941.8 Andrew Gulliford, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,” The Public Historian 22 (Spring 2000): 88.9 Robert H. Keller, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,“ The Journal of American History 87 (September 2000): 702.10 Mark Harvey, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks ,“ Montana: The Magazine of Western History 51 (Autumn 2001): 69.



Whittenberg 3

of research that went into this work that shows in the extensive notes section. The biggestcomplaint by most is not at the author but the publishers who removed the completebibliography to save on costs.

As mentioned before, Spence uses a number of quotes from famousenvironmentalists throughout his book. He also introduces each chapter with a quote from

an American Indian. One does not have to read in too much to see the irony between each party. One of note is from Luther Standing Bear in 1933 where he proclaims “we did notthink of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams as „wild.‟ Notuntil the hairy man from the east came was it wild for us. When the very animals of theforest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the „Wild West‟ began.” 11 Year after year, the National Park Service is thought to be one of the most trusted agenciesin the federal government. Documentaries like Ken Burns‟ “The National Parks: America‟sBest Idea” would not be poss ible without the American fascination with these areas and

people‟s desire to go back to nature or the wild. However, Mark David Spence has written avery clear and concise text stating that the National Park Service is no different than thecountless other federal agencies that consistently moved native Indian populations farther

and farther west and finally on to poorly run reservations. Men like National Park ServiceDirector Horace M. Albright may have been praised for their work on the parks, but Spencealso shows their “piranha -like instincts” to gather up more and more reservation land toexpand park boundaries. 12 Dispossessing the Wilderness is not just a rebuttal of the recentdefinition of the wilderness or simply another government versus the Indians story.Spence‟s book shows how intelligent, highly respected men (that are supposed to have apassion for the environment) can ignore the problem in front of them while justifying theiractions to belittle, remove and perhaps even destroy a people and their way of life. We areused to vilifying men like Andrew Jackson and events like the Trail of Tears. Spence goeseven deeper than the obvious targets to such honored men as John Muir who called Indiansof the Yosemite “hideous,” “ugly” and had no place in th is man-established wilderness. 13 Like the many tourists to come, Muir wanted his wilderness unspoiled by these so-calledfilthy natives. In the words of cartoonist and sometime environmentalist Walt Kelly and hisalter- ego Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

11 Spence, 25.12 Ibid., 98.13 Ibid., 109.

Documents

HIST 7104 - DispossessingTheWildernessReview-AWhittenberg